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Having never kept a diary before in my life – under my mother and grandmother’s insistence, I kept a diary of my travels since I left Ireland (effectively in 2006 after graduating from Uni). Now I want to use my blog to show other people in the world that we can all live amazing lives. We don’t need to go posh schools, or have wealthy parents. You can grow up with a single parent, you can have student debt, but you can still choose to make something of your life. In your own way. So I’m trying to do that, and I hope you guys can too.

I have always wanted to see the world and since being talked out of a ‘gap year’ at 18 I left Ireland, moved to England to study International Economics at Loughborough University. Anyway, I graduated in 2006 and throughout my uni holidays and immediately after finishing my degree I worked a few summers as a counsellor on kids camps in America – Jewish camps, special needs camps, disadvantaged kids camps – im sure u get the picture, and anyone who has ever seen the show ‘bug juice’ will have a pretty good idea what the job entails! Namely, lots of crazy kids, not much sleep and too much booze.

So after that I moved to Thailand, studied my CELTA diploma (i’ll go into that further in future blogs but basically it’s a Cambridge Uni qualification to teach English abroad as a foreign language. I figure loads of people may be considering that as a means to travel so I’ll blog in depth about the practicalities and lifestyle associated with it).

I literally bought a one-way ticket to Chiang Mai back in March 2007, Thailand and that was me. I have been on the road ever since, and my initial grand plans of teaching English for a year and returning to a career in finance in London have long since gone. I think my life is going in a very different (and a lot more fulfilling) direction now.

So I taught in Thailand, then I had a teaching stint in Korea and then I travelled. And travelled. And travelled for well over a year – for around $5000AUD (Australian Dollars, where I am now) which was very cheap and very very awesome. I will go into explicit detail how I spent so little in around 60 weeks and 20 odd countries across Asia, but the lack of cash created so many amazing experiences that now – if i ever do have enough money – I’ll travel the same, broke, destitute way I did the first time.

The blog is going to recollect my time as an English teacher abroad (both in Thailand and Korea), my travels and tips on how I manage to travel on around $90 (AUD) a week for food, accommodation and travel over a long, long time lol!

I now have a one way ticket to Zambia booked for May so I’m planning my Africa trip at the moment. So I’m tryin to get my blog up to speed over the next couple of months with my 3 years of working and traveling abroad and then I’ll continue with my tales of my time in Africa.

Also, a bit of a hash job I know but I dont have a working copy of photoshop anymore so here is my (messy!) route around asia for the last couple of years 🙂

Long story short? Watch this space. I want my life to be one that I’m proud of. And I hope it shows that anyone can do something similar too. See you on the other side!